Todd Narbey was born in Timaru, New Zealand in 1970. He began his study at Aoraki Polytechnic in Timaru in 1992 where he won a Study Scholarship. From there, he moved to Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin and then to the Australian National University in Canberra from 1993 to 1996. Todd has had many exhibitions throughout New Zealand and Australia and since moving to Europe has exhibited in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and France.Todd Narbey is currently based in Paris, France. Searching within the canvas for an abstract place and time, he creates a stage in which a single form will metaphorically act out an earthly reflection of the life surrounding him. Speaking of mortality, sexuality and sometimes a lonely and alienated life in a new country, he deals with barriers of death, love, culture and language. «The survival of the whales balances on the whim of a handful of scientists who, to save them, can only ask this question: What is the survival of these mammals worth? How much effort are we ready to expend to save the whales? Here, faced with such a question – whose cynicism is matched by its cruelty – is where the work of Todd Narbey responds: rather than trying to measure the value of the whale species, to attribute to it, in the great chessboard of diversity, an appraisal, shouldn’t the imminence of their extinction teach us that it is our very own value system that is at fault, that it is this convention we must attack?For it is clear that if we turn the monster that ate Jonah into a creature that must be consumed (..), our civilization depive us to understand that Jonah, defying the commandments of God, did nothing but escape himself, in an attempt to evade his inner voice that echoed in his soul: do not kill the one who resembles you, but accept the possibility that it may be you who is wrong.Frédéric-Charles Baitinger